Technology and the disabled

My recent attendance of a workshop with the South Africa federation for the Disabled (SAFOD) was very enlightening and made me realize how little thought I have given to disability in my own teaching. There is so much we take for granted and at the same time it made me think about the opportunities that technology now afford disabled people. The organisations represented at the training workshop, which focused on Research practice, have poor ICT infrastructure and many of the staff are poorly skilled in research which should inform their role in activism. Personally, I am not sure whether this is a characteristic of  solely disability or perhaps the NGO sector or both?

In South Africa we have free access to Social Networking sites such as FB, Mxit, Twitter, all of which we've become so accustomed to that we hardly give it a second thought. But few of the participants had any knowledge or access to similar ICT's in their own countries. Some advantages that ICT's have for such organizations is that in a virtual environment physical disabilities does not exist, distance is eliminated, skype calls can give presence and it is now easier to network with people from various countries than ever before. My meager contribution has been to create a FB site for SAFOD (http://www.facebook.com/groups/SAFOD/) to encourage further networking beyond the training workshops. Join the group if you feel you would like to support or find out more about the organization's activities.